• By Vikas Yadav
  • Sat, 10 Feb 2024 02:36 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND

Online frauds have been on the rise in recent times. To control such activities to some extent, the Indian government blocked roughly 1.4 lakh phone numbers that were linked to cybercrimes such as financial fraud. In a meeting chaired by Financial Services Secretary Vivek Joshi, topics such as cyber security in the financial services sector were discussed.

Topics such as onboarding financial institutions and banks in the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) service via Application Programming Interface (API) were also covered. The deliberations also revolved around integrating the CFCFRMS into the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) for effective coordination with banks, police and financial institutions.

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"About 1.40 lakh mobile handsets either linked to the disconnected mobile connections or misused in cyber-crime/financial frauds have been blocked," according to the press note. "DoT (Department of Telecom) analysed 35 lakh Principal Entities sending bulk SMSs. Out of these, 19,776 Principal Entities involved in sending malicious SMSs blacklisted and 30,700 SMS Headers and 1,95,766 SMS templates have been disconnected," the release added.

The meeting also discussed the preparedness against cyber security challenges of banks and the financial sector based on the last meeting in November 2023. This was scheduled based on the recent trend of frauds concerning digital payments and monitoring the preparations of stakeholders to deal with such incidents.

It also came to light that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has developed an AI machine learning-based engine called ASTR to detect mobile connections activated using forged documents. The meeting also noted that banks shall phase out the use of 10-digit numbers and use numbers with series such as '140xxx' for promotional and commercial activities, as prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

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To date, 500 arrests have been made and roughly 3.08 lakh SIMs, 50,000 IMEI, 592 fake links/APKs and 2,194 URLs have been blocked since April 2023. Besides developing SoPs for returning funds to victims, customer awareness programs, and the availability of resources for registering complaints were also discussed.

With IANS, PTI inputs